SLHS recognizes the achievements of its emeritus faculty for their many contributions in building its programs and educating its outstanding graduates.
Dr. Carol Mackersie was appointed to the faculty in 1996, after working for more than a decade as a clinical audiologist. She taught courses in hearing amplification, psychoacoustics and research methodology. Dr. Mackersie mentored over two dozen doctoral research projects and frequently published papers with her students. Dr. Mackersie’s research focuses on the perceptual consequences of acquired hearing loss, indices of hearing-related stress, and factors affecting success with hearing amplification. Her research was funded by the National Institute of Health and by several private foundations. Dr. Mackersie served as SDSU Audiology Program Director and the Co-Director of the Joint SDSU/UCSD Doctor of Audiology (AuD) Program from May 2016 through August 2021. As a clinician-researcher, Dr. Mackersie embraced the clinician-scientist model of audiology education, fostering a commitment to research foundations of clinical practice and life-long learning in her students. Dr. Mackersie received the 2021 SDSU Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award for outstanding faculty contributions in the College of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Steve Kramer joined the audiology program in 1985 and retired in 2019. Dr. Kramer served as the Chair of the School (1991-2001) and as the founding AuD Program Director (2003-2017), which he helped develop. During his tenure at SDSU, he also served one year as Acting Associate Dean and one year as Acting Graduate Dean. His research focused on clinical audiology and human electrophysiology, including newborn hearing screening programs. He enjoyed teaching and developed/taught many of the courses in the audiology program. He authored a popular textbook Audiology Science to Practice and a companion Audiology Workbook. He was also licensed and certified (CCC) in audiology and enjoyed supervising students.
Dr. Marilyn Newhoff served as Dean, College of Health and Human Services, at San Diego State University, and also as Director, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She is an internationally known scholar in the normal and disordered aspects of both child and adult language. Her numerous publications can be found in prestigious journals, as well as classroom and reference texts. Dr. Newhoff was the Founding Editor of the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and served as Chair of its Publications Board. Dr. Newhoff is also a recipient of the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the most prestigious award given by the association.
Dr. Lewis P. Shapiro began his stint at SDSU in 1995. He investigates the linguistic, cognitive, and neuroscience underpinnings of language processing. His work has often focused on clinical populations, including adult stroke survivors who have aphasia. Dr. Shapiro has had continuous NIH funding since 1988 and is also PI on an NIH doctoral training grant since 2005. Dr. Shapiro’s impactful scientific contributions include the first online work on the role of predicate argument structure in sentence processing in both neurologically healthy individuals and those with aphasia, some of the first work examining the role of prosody in online sentence processing, work suggesting the separation of lexical from syntactic processing routines, and cutting-edge collaborative work examining the efficacy of a treatment approach for sentence production and comprehension deficits in aphasia. Dr. Shapiro has had various roles in the School, including as Director (2014-2016). Dr. Shapiro was awarded Fellow of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association in 2003, received the SDSU Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions for the College of Health and Human Services in 2005, and the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Florida in 2016.
Dr. Beverly Wulfeck* is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, and researcher. Her research has focused on real-time processing and brain imaging techniques to examine the neural correlates of language and cognitive processing in typical children and adults, adults with aphasia, and children with neurodevelopmental impairment. Her research was supported by the National Institutes of Health for over 25 years. Dr. Wulfeck was Director of the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences (2004-2014) and founding Program Director of the highly ranked SDSU/UCSD joint doctoral program in Language and Communicative Disorders (1996-2014). In 2008, Dr. Wulfeck received the Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions for the College of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Vera Gutierrez-Clellen’s research program has been focused on the acquisition of language in bilingual children with typical and impaired development. Her work has been funded by the NIH as well as the U.S. Dept. of Education. She developed the first language test in the field that addresses the cultural and linguistic diversity of Latino children in the country: the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA). Dr. Gutiérrez-Clellen has also been an expert consultant for the State of California for the development of infant and toddler program guidelines, as well as preschool standards for English language learners. She has provided numerous years of service to national peer review panels for ASHA, NIH-NIDCD, and the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education. In 2005, she was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Head Start Accountability and Educational Performance Measures, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Donna Thal‘s research efforts have been focused on the relationships between language and cognition in young children with delayed and precocious lexical development, language impaired children, and children with focal brain injury. One of the major goals of her work is to identify predictors of risk for language learning disorders in infants and toddlers. Dr. Thal is also a co-developer of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and the Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas: Fundacion MacArthur, instruments designed for the assessment of communication in children between 8- and 30-months of age.
Dr. Li-Rong Cheng is the Executive Director of Chinese Study Institute, the managing director of the Confucius Institute, and the co-chair of the Asian Task Force. Dr. Cheng had served as a member of the board of trustees of the Campanile Foundation of San Diego State University. She was the former chair of the Multicultural Issues Board for ASHA and the current chair of Education Committee for the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. She was the past president of the International Affairs Association, a related professional organization of ASHA. She is also a fellow of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). Dr. Cheng is the recipient of the 1997 ASHA Award for special contributions to Multicultural Affairs and the recipient of the 2002 Diversity Award from the California Speech & Hearing Association. Dr. Cheng has numerous publications and has lectured all over the world.
Darlene G. Davies, M.A., Ed.S., served as Chair of the speech-language division of Children Hospital and Healthcare Center, and as founding clinical director of the Speech and Hearing Clinic at Balboa Naval Hospital, which was staffed by SDSU graduate Speech and Hearing Clinic students and supervised by tenured SDSU faculty. She served on the SLHS faculty for 18 years full time and for many years part time. In 1962, Darlene was the first Graduate Teaching Assistant in the SDSU department, a position she filled from 1962 until 1965. For three years, she was Associate Book Review Editor for ASHA magazine, and authored or co-authored professional articles in speech, language, and hearing publications. On November 14, 2006, Darlene Davies Day was declared by the City and the County of San Diego and a Resolution of Commendation was introduced into the records of the California State Senate. Darlene received an SDSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008, and was the College of Health and Human Services 2009 commencement speaker. She is the author of the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing’s history, all three sections of which appear on the SLHS website. Additionally, she wrote MORTAR BOARD, a book which traces the history of SDSU’s Jane K. Smith Cap and Gown chapter from 1932 until 2018. She was the recipient of the national honor society’s Distinguished Mortar Board Member Award in 2017. In the same year, Darlene was a 2017 San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame inductee.
Sue Earnest, Ph.D. was born in 1907 and passed away in 2007 at 100 years of age. Hers was a life filled with learning and accomplishment. She graduated from San Diego State College in 1928, earned a Master’s degree from SDSC in 1938, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1947, the same year in which she joined the SDSC faculty. Prior to 1947, Earnest taught in San Diego City Schools. Earnest was a faculty member at SDSC for 26 years, serving for 18 of those as chair of the department, known then as the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology. She co-founded the Children’s Speech and Language Clinic, and her guidance was essential to the growth of the clinic that serves adults. She also aided in creating a similar clinic at Balboa Naval Medical Center. Active in the American Speech, Language, Hearing Association, the International Association for Logopedics and Phoniatrics, and the National Board of Governors of United Cerebral Palsy, as well as Toastmasters International, she displayed boundless energy. After retirement, Earnest assumed leadership roles as president of the SDSU Alumni Association and the Friends of the Library. She and her husband, Lester, gifted to SDSU a statue of the first president of the San Diego Normal School, Samuel T. Black (1897-1919). It sits prominently in front of the SDSU Faculty-Staff Center. Earnest attended the Normal School before entering SDSC. That Normal School became SDSU much later. Affectionately referred to as “Dr. Sue” on campus, Earnest received SDSU Distinguished Alumni Awards (previously known as Montys) in recognition of her contributions to the university and community. She was named Woman of the Year by Business and Professional Women of San Diego County, was San Diego County Mortar Board Distinguished Alumna, and was honored by the national Mortar Board.
- Allen, Elizabeth J. (1971-2004)
- Christensen, Kathee M. (1978-2004)
- Kopp, Harriet G. (1970-1983) *
- Nichols, Alan C. (1964-2000)
- Reidman, Richard M. (1962-1992)
- Seitz, Michael (1985-2004)*
- Thile, Edmund L. (1967-1998)*
- Williams, Diane R. (1975-2002)
* deceased
